


Faithful Wounds

by Philomytha



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Concealing injury, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Slavery, Tending Wounds, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 23:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18883528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: After Voq tries to kill her, Michael returns to her quarters and finds her Kelpien slave is waiting to tend to her injuries. A missing scene from 'The Wolf Within'.





	Faithful Wounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



The transporter's haze dwindled to nothing. Michael stared at the glitter in the air until she realised it was the glitter in her own eyes she was seeing, and turned away harshly. Her crew stared dead ahead.

"I will be in my quarters," she stated. A ripple of Terran salutes followed her as she stalked out of the transporter room and along the corridors to the captain's rooms.

The door hissed shut behind her, and Michael stopped just inside. It was impossible to slump or slouch in this plate armour; she was held rigidly upright by it even as her legs wavered. She leaned back against the door and closed her eyes. It was done. She had transmitted the data. She had dealt with Voq. It was done.

When she finally opened her eyes again, Saru was standing before her, and for an instant this felt so ordinary and natural that she almost smiled. But this Saru was stooped in an uncomfortable half-bow, eyes cast down, a shackle around his ankle. She flinched.

"Oh. It's you."

"Is the Captain injured?" he asked in his low voice. He always addressed her like that, avoiding the familiarity of 'you'. Michael wished she could think of herself like that here: the Captain of the _Shenzhou_ , in the Imperial Fleet, not Michael Burnham. _Not me._

"The Captain is fine," she said dully, as if she could will it to be true. "Go about your duties, Saru."

Saru did not move. "It is my duty to serve the Captain."

Annoyed, Michael pushed off the door and strode across the room to get away from him. She managed two steps from the force of pushing off the door before her knees buckled.

As swiftly as he had thrown Ash--Voq off her a short while ago, Saru caught her now, his long hand closing around her elbow. He took her weight effortlessly and steered her to the little sofa.

"I will summon the doctor," he said when she was sitting, still stiffly upright in her armour. 

"No!" Michael snapped, and he cringed from her as if expecting a blow. She probably should hit him, to maintain her cover. "No," she said again in a more measured voice. "It's only bruises." And shock. And other reactions she had no time for, not here, not now. She ran a hand over her face, her vision blurring. Adrenalin, she recalled Captain Georgiou saying once, was a hell of a drug, right until you came down off it. Voq had fought her brutally, had thrown her across the room, had tried to snap her neck, but she hadn't felt it until now. Now her ribcage was throbbing under the armour, each breath hurt and she felt dizzy and sick and shaky and exhausted.

Saru was still standing over her. "If the Captain will permit," he murmured, "I will tend to the Captain's honourable injuries."

There was nothing honourable about it, Michael thought, but she nodded, then reached up to unfasten the breastplate, and bit back a gasp of pain. Saru said nothing, but he pushed her hand away and unfastened it himself. He lifted it over her head without letting it so much as brush her side, then the heavy tunic too, and then unfastened the soft shirt beneath. He made a slight click of dismay. Michael looked down at herself to see a long scrape that had oozed blood across her side, and a patchwork of red and purple bruises over her ribs.

"Ow," she said lightly, and Saru made the little clicking sound again that she knew meant concern. He moved slowly across the room and came back with a small medkit, and produced a handheld regenerator which he ran over the bruises.

"It is merely bruising," he said, looking at the readout. "This should ease them." 

She was shaking with reaction, and the room swam around her. With another concerned sound, he stooped over her and moved her like a child, so that she was half lying along the sofa with her head resting against the arm, his touch gentle and sure, then turned on the regenerator. The device gave a low hum as it worked, and Michael felt the swelling ease, the damaged tissues healing and knitting together again. If only all injuries could be so easily mended. She sighed as the pain faded to a memory, and leaned back against the sofa. 

"Thank you," she said automatically, and his gaze flashed to her face, wide-eyed, then he looked quickly down. She was going to give herself away, after all this. She'd killed Connor here, when he challenged her. Could she kill Saru, if she betrayed herself to him? She didn't want to think about the answer to that. 

Saru knelt beside her with a basin of warm water and began to clean the blood from her side, and she realised she was still trembling. She tried to hold her hands still, tucking them in by her sides. Hot tears were prickling her eyes; she was afraid she was going to break down completely in front of him. 

"It is a terrible thing," Saru said quietly as he sponged blood from her skin, "to be betrayed in such a manner, by one you trusted so closely." He kept his eyes cast down as he spoke. "Even the strongest heart would grow weak then." He set the sponge down and took her hand in his. Michael startled at the over-familiar gesture, then saw that she had scraped her knuckles raw in the fight and he was poised to clean them for her. She took a deep breath. He was just doing his job. 

"Yes, see to that," she said, attempting a dismissive tone of voice, the way the Terrans spoke to their slaves. It came out sounding as unlikely as a child pretending to be a starship captain, her voice choked. Saru made a faint worried click. 

"You will have your Captain Lorca here soon," he said, and she was aware of something different in his voice. He went on before she could place it. "I am afraid the guards will not find that convincing." 

Michael snatched her hand away from him and stared. Saru straightened, holding his head up and looking her full in the face for the first time. Unafraid, she thought. He sounds unafraid. "I have served Michael Burnham for ten years," he said, "and you are not Michael Burnham." Then at her faint gasp, he bowed again, slowly and very deeply. "Do not be afraid. I will die rather than reveal this." 

Michael sat up, feeling like she'd been grabbed and thrown across the room again. "That," she managed, "is a very serious accusation." 

Saru nodded a little. "Better," he said, sounding for an instant like an examiner in the Academy. "You are very like Michael Burnham," he went on. "It is not that your behaviour is out of character--at least, not to the eyes of the crew. But Kelpien eyes can see deeper into the spectrum than human, and we can sense emotions more strongly. Your emotional responses are ... very different." He took her hand again, and began to clean and treat the scrapes. "I do not know what you are doing here, and I will not ask you. But any help I can give you, I will. You must not arouse suspicion amongst the crew." 

Help. Michael put her other hand on his, so that he had to stop cleaning her scrapes. "I should be offering that to you," she said finally. "Of all that I have seen here, it is your situation that--" _That makes it hardest for me to hold my tongue. That makes me want to take my phaser and start shooting._ "Did you not wonder how I knew your name?" 

"I wonder many things," he said obliquely. "It was a name I have not heard since I was a calfling on my mother's hip." 

"You know another Michael Burnham," she said. "Where I am from, I know another Saru. He is free, respected, an officer in our fleet. I--if you want me to, I can smuggle you out." The route that had worked for Voq would work for him too. Doubtless the captain was allowed to space her slaves without question. She began to think how she could manage it. Commander Saru would be upset that she had been untruthful, but that was a very small price, and he would undoubtedly know best how to help his other self. 

He said nothing, but gently removed her hand and finished treating her cuts. When the last traces them had melted away under the regenerator, he said, "No. I cannot leave my post." 

"But--they'll kill you, in the end, Saru." 

"They kill all of us in the end, you-who-are-not-Michael-Burnham. It is the Balance. But before then, I have work to do." 

"You are one of the rebels?" Of course he was; of all the people she had met here, he was the most like her own friend. She looked aside. "I am sorry. I should not ask that." 

"No," he agreed, surprising her. "You should not." He looked up. "The guards will bring Lorca here soon, you must be ready." He offered a fresh shirt and tunic, and began, automatically, to help her dress. His tunic slipped as he bent over, and she saw a line of livid marks on the ridged skin of his back. She put out a hand, arresting his movement. "Saru, what is this?" 

He twitched the tunic back. "You must not concern yourself with that." 

"But someone's beaten you. I'll--how dare they?" She stood abruptly, pulling her tunic on without his assistance. "If I'm to be the captain here it should be good for something, at least." 

Saru gave a soft snort, sounding almost amused. "You ordered it. Or rather, I reported that you ordered it. You should have, when I laid violent hands on a human." 

"When you--but--you saved my life!" 

"Nonetheless. Captain Burnham would undoubtedly have ordered it. I reported that you had ordered it, in accordance with protocol." 

While she'd been dealing with Voq, he'd volunteered to be beaten to protect her cover, and then he'd returned immediately to look after her without letting on what he'd done. If her own mask had not faltered before him, she would never have known. "Dammit, Saru--" 

"It would have aroused great suspicion had I not done this." 

Michael picked up the regenerator. "Take your tunic off and sit down," she said. "You can't work like that." 

Again he snorted. "The slavemaster would be most surprised to discover that the marks he had inflicted only a few hours ago were gone." 

She looked at him in frustration, then reached for the first-aid kit and rummaged inside it. "This painkiller is safe for Kelpiens. Will you at least allow me to give you this?" 

In answer he extended an arm for the hypospray. The drug was fast-acting; by the time she had closed the kit up and set it aside, she could see that some of the lines of strain on his face were gone, his eye-ridges less deeply shadowed. She should have noticed that before, but she had not wanted to look too closely at him. 

"What _can_ I do for you, Saru? I hope--I do not think I will be here much longer. But there must be something I can do." 

He paused for a moment in thought. "There is a message you can send. It will not arouse suspicion, we use codes only a Kelpien would understand, but it is difficult for me to access the communication channels." 

Michael crossed to her desk at once. "Tell it to me now." 

Saru dictated a brief, bland message about an order for flowers for the captain's quarters, and gave an equally bland quartermaster's address on a separate ship. "This will go to my sister," he said unexpectedly as she entered the codes to dispatch it. "I hope to be able to get her free soon." He leaned on the desk just for an instant, and Michael pressed his hand again, twisting her fingers in his cool dry skin, taking as much comfort as she gave from the friendly touch. 

"The Saru I know," she said quietly, "would certainly be able to find a way to do this. You will too." 

He nodded and turned away as if he'd heard a distant sound. "They are bringing Lorca here now," he said. "Your armour." He put it on her, moving as smoothly as if he had never been beaten, bowing before her as if he was afraid. The door chimed and for a moment his ganglia flared, and Michael knew he was afraid, not of her, but for her. She straightened under the armour, pressing her face into the austere lines of Captain Burnham, draining expression from her eyes. Saru gave the tiniest nod: you'll pass. Michael gave him a look of Terran contempt, and his ganglia retreated. 

She opened the door and when the guards dragged Lorca in, they saw the captain scornfully dismissing her slave and turning to her prisoner to vent her anger, and were satisfied.


End file.
